By Sean Leviashvili

AfterHOURS provided a haven for punk and hardcore rock fans alike Friday night.

Organized collaboratively by the Council for University Programs and Kappa Sigma, the concert featured Long Island-based band Bayside as the headlining act, the Homefront and Four Year Strong. Each band played for about 40 minutes in front of a crowd of nearly 200.

Bayside, which formed in 2000, has been touring nationally since the start.

Chris Guglielmo, Bayside’s drummer of two years, said the band works well together, and as a former member of other bands he feels he’s found his niche.

“I’ve always pushed myself to get where I had to be,” he said. “Now I feel like I don’t have to.”

While Guglielmo said his band works well together, the three bands featured Friday do not customarily tour together, leaving some audience members uneasy about the combination.

“The first band that performed, the Homefront, was a much different genre than the other two,” said Cheri Snedeker, a sophomore chemistry major. “[The coordinators] could have found a better act, but the last two meshed well together.”

The Homefront took the stage with a two-minute bass solo, but once the lead singer began his screaming fit, the crowd formed a mosh pit, leaving one student with a bloody nose. The student was escorted out of afterHOURS by a security guard minutes after his injury became notieceable.

As the band performed their songs, which featured acoustic transitions, the crowd continued to cheer. The mosh pits disintegrated, temporarily.

Many of those who attended sang along with the band, word-for-word. Others, like Ryan Blake, a middler music industry major who had never listened to them before, said he found their sound appealing.

“I usually listen to jazz/funk music, bands like Zero7,” Blake said. “But they’re pretty tight for what they’re going for.”

Adam Sheppard said the band members succeeded in the way they incorporated their acoustics into the performance.

“They sounded good. It was a different sound,” Sheppard said. “They had nice minor chords, and combined with the screams it was well put together.”

Worcester natives Four Year Strong began with an elongated drum solo, combined with electric acoustics. The lead singer screamed “Check one-two” repeatedly for about three minutes, as the crowd began jumping and a less violent mosh pit, this time with no resulting visible injuries, erupted.

While singing songs like “Catastrophe” and “Men are from Mars, women are from Hell,” many audience members threw their arms up and sang along with the band. A few audience members were lifted up by others and brought inches away from the band members’ faces.

Janine Stafford, who said she has been listening to Four Year Strong since 2004, said the band performed well, but she felt the atmosphere detracted from the performance.

“I think their performance was good and the crowd really enjoyed it,” said the freshman communication studies major. “The sound system was really bad, but they were the band of the night.”